On Tap: Legal Draft Beer Company’s Smash & Grab IPA.

Legal Draft Beer Company’s Smash & Grab IPA Has A Strong Hoppy Taste That Will Arrest Your Tastebuds, But You’ll Have To Pardon Its Lack Of Clarity.

Welcome to On Tap! Each week in this recurring feature, we’ll take an in-depth look at one of the many beers now available in the suddenly crowded North Texas brew scene. The goal here is to look at these area beers without our local goggles on and to wonder aloud, “Is this beer good or do I just like it because it’s local?” Should be a fun experiment, no? Cheers to that!

Overview.
I think it’s cool when a brewery sticks to a theme. And so far, Legal Draft Beer Company’s due diligence has paid off. This week, I’m deposing Smash & Grab IPA, one of the brewer’s latest releases. For the most part, I like most of the beers I’ve tried from Legal Draft. Smash & Grab should follow precedent. But I realize that I might be jumping the shark by not covering its main IPA first. At this point, I am running out of steam here on cute legalese jargon, so I’ll cut the bullshit and get back to my regular speak to describe the time I spent with Legal Draft’s latest IPA.

Background on American IPA.
For a primer on the American IPA style, check out our review on Texas Ale Project’s 50FT Jackrabbit. The American IPA style is all about showcasing New World hop varietals. Typically, an American IPA will have a base malt of American 2-row. Hops are notably American or New World, unlike other older-school Noble hop varietals. Fermentation is typically clean, and is also appropriate if it leans a little bit toward the fruity end of the spectrum. An American IPA should have good clarity, but a slight haze is appropriate if the beer is dry hopped. Body should be medium on this style with a dry finish and a medium to high level of carbonation.

Appearance.
Smash & Grab pours deep gold into the glass. I poured the first part hard in order to get the foam to stand up, and it does make a nice, thick layer of foam. After some time, the foam remains as a thin layer atop the beer and lines cling down the glass. One thing that throws me off a bit is the strange particle situation here with the clarity. There is a serious amount of floaty particles on this beer. As the beer warms, these particles start to gravitate toward each other and form into clumps. I was expecting the clarity to be brilliant on this beer, but it’s just not here. I opened a second beer to make sure this one beer’s particle situation wasn’t a fluke. And I do see the same floaty bits the second time around. And that shouldn’t come as a surprise, since these cans are from the same canning run, packaged in the same moment.

Aroma.
What this beer misses in clarity, it absolutely makes up for in aroma. I get a massive amount of tropical notes on the nose. I sense a neutral, subtle grainy sweetness behind all the hops; it’s just enough to support the floral and intense hop aroma.

Flavor.
Smash & Grab drinks clean and there’s no surprises here. I sense quite a bit of hop bitterness, akin to a West Coast style IPA. According to Legal Draft’s website, the grain bill on this beer is all 2-row. And while it’s nice and clean, there’s nothing that jumps out at me. But I guess that’s the point with a SMASH, or single-malt-and-single-hop, beer like this. The hop flavor remains in the aftertaste, along with a small amount of malt sweetness.

Mouthfeel.
Carbonation is medium-high on this beer, as expected on an American IPA. The beer finishes dry and crisp, with a lingering aftertaste that hangs around for a bit. All in all, though, it’s the hop flavor that stays with me and carries me to the next sip.

Overall Impression.
It’s nice to see another SMASH beer available in DFW. I think that Legal Draft has a success on its hands with Smash & Grab. The clarity problems, the weird floaty particles, are a bit of a negative for me. Part of me wishes that the brewery could have coaxed a little bit more character out of the Citra hops. I feel like I notice Citra more in the aroma and/or dry hop portion of an IPA, and while there are noticeable parts of that classic Citra nose here in Smash & Grab IPA, I’m not sure that I’m getting the whole story. Or maybe my brain has tricked me into believing that the Citra I know isn’t really Citra itself, rather it’s another combination of hops that I have grown to love.

Score. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give Legal Draft Beer Company Smash & Grab IPA a 5.

Ben Smithson is a beer fan, avid homebrewer and foodie. If he's not brewing, learning or writing about beer, you might find him hanging out at one of the local craft beer joints in East Dallas. To counter his bad habits, he rides his bike and kayaks when the weather is nice.